Babble On An’ Ting
★★★★
Kris Needs with Alex Paterson OMNIBUS. £16.99
Inside-track saga of The Orb, ’90s ambient-house giants.
Needs, later of this parish but then editing ZigZag, first encountered Paterson circa 1980 as Killing Joke’s drum roadie, and their paths frequently intertwined over the ensuing 40 years, from squats shared with proto-Orb sidekick Youth, through a shared passion for early electro, to shadowy renown as punk-inspired dance mavericks. A distant cousin of snooker’s Ronnie O’Sullivan, ‘Dr’ Alex had a rough childhood: after losing his father aged three, his mum packed him off to boarding school where bullying was institutional. There, he shielded Youth, two years his junior, and the duo’s angerfuelled passage through Killing Joke (Paterson voiced Bodies in gig encores), NYC electro fanaticism and the incestuous KLF-Orb crowd’s unhinged first steps is meticulously narrated. Success with Adventures
Beyond The Ultraworld and Primal Scream’s Higher Than The Sun, both in 1991, brought only fleeting joy as dodgy management and label pressures snuffed Paterson’s creative juju. His postmillennial re-emergence feels like a triumph for a visionary of warmth and humility.